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The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a petition filed by the Tamil Nadu government challenging the anticipatory bail granted to Union minister M K Alagiri's son Durai Dayanidhi in the alleged multi-crore granite quarrying scam.
A bench comprising justices H L Dattu and Ranjan Gogoi also refused to interfere with the Madras high court's decision quashing a non-bailable arrest warrant against Dayanidhi.
The bench, however, asked Dayanidhi to cooperate with the investigation of the case and gave liberty to the state government to approach the apex court in case of non-assistance by the accused.
On December 10, 2012, the high court had granted relief to Dayanidhi and directed him to surrender his passport and to appear daily at the Melur police station, where the case is registered against him, until further orders.
The NBW against Dayanidhi was ordered by a judicial magistrate at Melur in Madurai district on a police plea in October.
Dayanidhi and nine others are facing charges that firms owned by them had mined sand and granite without permission.
On a complaint from the local village administrative officer, police had charged Dayanidhi and Nagarajan, partners in Olympus Granites Pvt Ltd, with encroaching on adjacent government land and taking away large quantity of granite illegally without quarrying in the permitted area and causing a loss of Rs 44 crore to the government by illegal quarrying.
Cases had been registered under various Indian Penal Code sections including 120(b) (criminal conspiracy), 447 (criminal trespass) and 420 (cheating) against them.
The government had cracked down on several firms after former Madurai collector U Sahayam estimated the losses incurred from illegal granite mining at around Rs 16,000 crore.
The police had alerted immigration authorities to help them in preventing Dayanidhi and other accused from leaving the country. The companies' accounts had already been frozen.